Investigating the relationships among people, land, ownership, and development at the city’s edge.

Shifting Thresholds was a multi-faceted approach to understanding the unique landscapes comprising the suburban/ rural edges in the Great Plains. With few natural boundaries (mountains, ocean, forests, etc.) to restrict expansion, growth is propelled by a sense of infinite land resources. The relentless orthogonal grid of the Public Land Survey System of 1785 is the only concrete framework structuring growth. These purely legal boundaries of survey and ownership shape development patterns and form. As a result, development and agriculture co-exist in a continually changing patchwork of ownership and use, where intersecting natural systems become more fractured, truncated, and engineered over time.

Bordered by the city of Omaha and the Missouri and Platte Rivers on three sides, Sarpy County has undergone rapid suburbanization and quickly changing forms of settlement over the last 40 years. Although many family farms have given way to housing and commercial developments, Sarpy County still contains some of the state’s richest soils, a key piece of the I-80 corridor connecting Omaha to the State Capital in Lincoln, rich river floodplain ecologies, and persistent remnants of its agricultural heritage. These attributes are important to the future of the Omaha metro area.

By documenting and visualizing this multi-faceted land history, we can better understand how external factors have shaped the landscape over time, and whether the current stewardship practices remain suitable. Documentation of development from pre-settlement to present was conducted through historical and analytical ownership mapping, aerial photography, driving interviews with suburban residents, farmers, and the development community, and a categorical timeline of generational responses to tax code, agricultural innovations, and familial circumstances. The recorded driving interviews added an additional layer of personal perspective. All documentation then shaped an interactive engagement trailer that traveled around the county, stopping at malls, churches, parades, and other disparate gathering places. All final documents now live at the Sarpy County Historical Museum.

Shifting Thresholds led to several other Emerging Terrain initiatives, including impacts on natural corridors and species endangerment (Migration Station) and the impacts of land trade through tax code resulting from suburbanization (Glacial Shifts).

The following links provide downloads of all Shifting Thresholds material. Documents are very large and take time to download. Use the back button on your browser to return to this page:

Project Partners

Sarpy County Board of Commissioners; Sarpy County Tourism; Sarpy County Historical Society and Museum; Rural Futures Initiative; University of Nebraska-Lincoln, College of Architecture, Community and Regional Planning, and Landscape Architecture.

Aerial Photography by Alex MacLean

All 253 grid sections of Sarpy County were flown in September 2011. Thank you Alex, we had a stupendous time with you!

Design Fellows Team

A special thanks to 2012 Design Fellows, Sara Lum (Project Lead), Nick Rebeck (Engagement Trailer and Historical Timeline), and Kayla Meyer (Interview and Transcription), for putting all the pieces together in such a communicative way.

Sponsors

Thank you to the National Endowment for the Arts Our Town and the Nebraska Humanities Council for making the project possible.